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Entries in Employee Policies
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With the federal government's budget set to run out on April 28, a government shutdown is looming. As a federal contractor, a shutdown can have a variety of negative effects on your business and employees, whether employees are locked out of their job sites or federal funding dries up. In this Verrill Voices podcast, attorney Joanna Bowers discusses how federal contractors should prepare and steps they can take once a shutdown goes into effect.

With technology advancing at the current rate, the dark ages referenced isn’t ten or fifteen years ago, but instead, two or three. If your capacity for reviewing policies and practices at the beginning of the year is limited, working with your information technology department and crafting up-to-date and relevant policies and practices related to technology in the workplace should be at the top of your list.

Activity tracking devices, smart glasses, and other employee efficiency tracking devices no longer serve as the baseline for technology in the workplace. Last year, Sony filed a patent for a “smart” contact lens which will record images to an internal storage device so that users can “easily and quickly access” recordings. How could this new technology effect your current confidentiality provisions? Or, if you still have guidelines prohibiting recordings in the workplace (see the NLRB’s view on that here), what effect will these contacts have on your current policies?

Earlier this year, the National Labor Relations Board, in Medco Health Solutions of Las Vegas, Inc., 364 N.R.R.B. No. 115 (Aug. 27, 2016), found that a dress code policy that banned “confrontational” clothing banned federal labor law. The case, stemmed from an incident in which the Company ordered an employee to remove a t-shirt that said “I don’t need a WOW to do my job.” The WOW Program was created by the employer in 2009 and was an employee recognition program in which employees received “WOW awards” and could be featured on a “Wall of WOW” display.

The policy language at issue prohibited clothing that was “degrading, confrontational, slanderous, insulting or provocative.” The Board found that the company failed to show that the t-shirt would adversely affect the business.